Various forms of storage systems are used today. These forms include direct attached storage (DAS) network attached storage (NAS) systems, storage area networks (SANs), and others. Network storage systems are commonly used for a variety of purposes, such as providing multiple users with access to shared data, backing up data and others. A storage system typically includes at least one computing system executing a storage operating system for storing and retrieving data on behalf of one or more client computing systems (“clients”). The storage operating system stores and manages shared data containers in a set of mass storage devices.
Storage systems are being used extensively by different applications, for example, electronic mail (email) servers, database applications, virtual machines executed within virtual machine environments (for example, a hypervisor operating environment) and others to store data and protect the data using backups. To provide protection against data corruption or loss, data stored for various applications may be periodically backed up. A backup may be a full backup, in which all of the data is copied (e.g., a snapshot of a database is taken) and stored, or it may be an incremental backup in which a portion of the data that has changed since the last backup is copied and stored. Both the full backup and the incremental backup may be used to restore a data container to a desired recovery point.
In conventional systems, it is cumbersome to obtain information regarding data protection status and one may have to toggle through multiple interface to obtain data protection status. When performing restore operations, it is difficult to verify if recovery can be performed within defined service levels. Continuous efforts are being made to improve data protection management.